


Open With You

by vibranium



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Anonymous prompt, F/M, This is just really fluffy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-13
Updated: 2013-10-13
Packaged: 2017-12-29 08:15:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1003072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vibranium/pseuds/vibranium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha knows by the way he speaks to her...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Open With You

**Author's Note:**

> Self-beta'd, so feel free to tell me about errors!  
> Anonymous prompt from tumblr: Clintasha prompt: Natasha knows Clint's been in love with her for a while but she's the first one to come clean about her feelings.  
> I hope you like it!  
> Edit: Beta'd by Goose! Mistakes are officially fixed!

Natasha knows by the way he speaks to her, by the way he watches her when she speaks and knows how she likes her tea and which pillow she uses the most on their couch (he knows, too, just why she likes the pillow, though she doesn’t know how he could possibly figure that out) (he often finds her asleep and curled around it on the couch when he returns from missions in the middle of the night and has figured out on his own that it smells like him and _that’s_ why she likes it. He just doesn’t think anything of it).

 

Clint seems to know her better than herself, and while she had found that unnerving just two years ago, she now knows what it really means. She knows that he’s in love with her. Natasha thinks that he might not realize just how blatant he can be about it sometimes, especially when he fusses over her after a mission, wounds or no, or on cold mornings, when he comes up behind her with a blanket and cocoons her in their kitchenette.

 

It’s all endearing to her, because she also knows that Clint _likes_ to worry over her like a dog over her litter. And it’s _so_ damn endearing that she finds herself loving him back. Well, not just loving him, as she’s always loved him, in a way, for saving her and giving her a new life, so much better than the constant running and killing of her previous days.

 

Natasha can see it in herself, too, that she’s fallen in love with the goofy, bumbling idiot who hogs the covers and apologizes for it in the morning, and who treats her like some rugged princess who deserves the nice dresses but also the best weapons to take care of herself in battle.

 

The redhead figured it out roughly five months ago, and mulled over it for a good time before deciding that Clint deserved to know. He didn’t seem to be anywhere near making a move on Natasha (not that she, or anyone else, would blame him), or confessing his love for her. Maybe he didn’t quite see it yet in himself as she saw it in herself and in him. But Natasha couldn’t help but feel that after such a long time her partner, her best friend, should really know what the hell was going on between them.

 

One morning, over tea and coffee and those great vanilla scones from the café three city blocks down from the tower that he’d walked to get for them, she decides that she should tell him. Around a mouthful of scone, she mumbles, “You know, I really like us. I think we’d be good in a romantic relationship.”

 

She isn’t even looking at him, too interested in washing down the scone with a long drink of the tea that Clint had made for her, but she knows that he's sputtering. Moments later, he’s coughing and hitting at his chest with a fist, so she looks up to see him chugging down some coffee. “You’re bein’ serious?” he asks, voice raspy and a bit strangled. He clears his throat and drinks again, waiting impatiently for a response from Natasha.

 

“Well, yeah. I mean, I’m in love with you, and you with me, so why not?” she retorts (way too casually, Clint thinks to himself, for something so out of the blue and damn _serious_ ), giving him a shrug and reaching over with a napkin to get the corner of his mouth for him, sticky with coffee and covered with crumbs.

 

Then he’s coughing again, rasping out, “Yeah! Yeah, of course! I mean –” before he’s choking on the sip of coffee he’d downed. “How do you --? _What_?”

 

“You’re too obvious, Barton,” Natasha tells her partner teasingly, kicking one of his sock-clad feet with her bare one beneath the table. “If I never brought it up, you’d just drool over me your entire life without ever saying a word.”

 

“ _Hey_ ,” he shoots back, giving her a mock-accusing look.

 

She just laughs and hooks one of her ankles with his under their small table.


End file.
